


Ianto's Return

by Lisara_PenDalaya



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 15:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13639545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisara_PenDalaya/pseuds/Lisara_PenDalaya
Summary: Years after Torchwood has disbanded Jack is still in Cardiff, hoping the Doctor will return. When The Doctor finally does return Jack asks for his help in finding a way to rescue Ianto.





	Ianto's Return

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing fan-fiction, please don't judge me too harshly. I have double checked the spelling, but I have a really difficult time with spelling. I'm sorry for any spelling errors that make comprehension difficult, I hope if I used the wrong word anywhere it was at least humorous. 
> 
> None of these characters belong to me, I just really love them.

Jack sat cross legged on the Invisible Lift eating fries and drinking coffee. Well, technically it wasn't a lift anymore because it didn't lead anywhere. He could have repaired the Hub, but he didn't want to. It would be too painful, empty. He wasn't building a new team, because he knew how it would end. They would die and he would live. That would be too painful as well. His old team was gone, all dead except for Gwen, who he hadn't seen in years. Now here he was, again, sitting on the rift in Cardiff waiting for the Doctor. 

Jack kept a running commentary in his head on the people walking past. Sometimes he flirted with them, sometimes scolded them, depending on how his mood changed by the minute. He took a sip of the coffee, it was disgusting. It seemed like he hadn't had a really good cup of coffee since it had been made by… no! He would not even think that name, it was too painful. Why was everything so painful? He threw the coffee across the street where it smashed satisfyingly into the opposite curb. No one seemed to notice, so the soggy fries followed it. Jack instantly regretted it, he was hungry, but more than that it was good to have something to do with his hands and now he didn't. 

A group of college students walked past, their conversation weaving between laughing and serious. They were all touching each other in one manner or another, from holding hands, to playful shoves, to just brushing arms because of proximity. Not that he would have admitted it out loud but Jack was jealous of the students, their desire to live forever, and their carelessly close friendships. He, Captain Jack Harkness, who could charm anyone, had no friends. He had tried, well sort of. Pubs were good places to find people who took your mind off your ghosts, not long-term friends. Jack could have gotten anyone he felt like to be his, well whatever he liked, but he really needed someone special for actual companionship. He missed his team. They had had some idea who he was, that was rare. He could have looked up Gwen, but he liked her enough to want her to have a normal life, and the person he really he wanted to see was Ianto. It would have been easier if he thought moving on was the right thing, but he didn't want to forget anyone. Not Owen and Tosh, not anyone from before he ran Torchwood, and especially not Ianto Jones. It's hard to get over someone while trying to fix them permanently in your memory.

When the sound started, Jack instinctively rolled of the Invisible Lift, startling a pedestrian. He stood up, swishing his coat dramatically without really thinking about it, and tried to get his thoughts and feelings into order. He hadn't expected the Doctor to show up so quickly. Last time he had waited for over 100 years. He wanted to see the Doctor because he was lonely, but he also needed the Doctor. The Doctor could take him back home to the 51st century, fix his vortex manipulator, or even let Jack travel with him (the Doctor was pretty good at avoiding death), but what Jack really wanted, he barely dared to hope for. 

Jack was shoving the doors to the TARDIS open almost before it fully materialised, he didn't want the Doctor disappearing again. He knocked into the Doctor, who grabbed his shoulders and then backed up to look at him. “Captain Jack Harkness!” the Doctor said with his infuriatingly infectious laugh.

“Doctor!” Jack laughed in response. From the hug that followed, Jack got the feeling that the Doctor really was glad to see him to. 

The Doctor and Jack leaned against the railing overlooking Roald Dahl Pass with Mermaid Quay in the distance. 

“How have you been?” The Doctor asked, causing Jack's elation to go down slightly. 

“Well, you know me, I can't die.” Jack said with a hint of both bitterness and laughter. The Doctor chuckled drily. 

“And your friends?” That was the real reality bomb.

“Ianto’s dead, Gwen has a life, and you never even met the others.” Jack didn't bother to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Suddenly all the anger he felt about all the deaths, particularly Ianto’s, was directed at the Doctor.

“I'm sorry, about Ianto.” the Doctor said. He did sound sorry, but his calm manner infuriated Jack. He turned to face the Doctor, and without considering the consequences raised his voice. 

“Maybe if you’d been there he would still be alive!” and because anger had made him bold, he added “So you're going to save him.” the Doctor sighed, he looked sad not angry, but that didn't help to cool Jack’s anger.

“You were there when he died, weren't you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I was. So?”

“And you saw him, when he was dead?”

“Yes.”

“... I can't...the timelines...it's to complicated...I'm sorry.”

“All you do is travel in time, and mess up time lines!”

“This is different. I'm sorry, I really am.”

“I don't care about your timelines, I’m done worrying about timelines. You weren't there when the 456 came or when the Miracle happened. There was no one to save the world, and I tried but people died, Ianto died. You call yourself a doctor, but where were you when we needed to be healed? Where were you? Doctor.” By the end of this Jack might have been crying if he hadn't had years of practice keeping his tears back. He concentrated on putting every condescending thought into that last word. 

The Doctor posed to consider this. He didn't question what the 456 were or why a miracle was bad. Jack’s little speech had hit kind of close to home. All the worlds he promised to protect, he always worried, or perhaps feared, that one day he simply wouldn't notice something was wrong. As hard as he might work when he was on a planet, he never stayed anywhere long. What if one day he simply wasn't there? “Okay.” he said “It just might be possible. Let's do this.” 

On the way back to the TARDIS Jack told the Doctor everything about Ianto's death as factually as he could. Despite his best efforts it was impossible for him to remember every random detail the Doctor wanted. He’d had a lot of emotions at the time, and had died himself not long afterward. The Doctor seemed confident that he would be able to, with help from the TARDIS, cure whatever virus Ianto had. But that wasn't the only problem. 

“I'll wear a gasmask and get Ianto, you stay in the TARDIS. I'm serious this time. Don't wander off.” 

“I know.” How fitting, Jack thought, that what was likely to be his last trip with the Doctor would involve a gasmask.

“And how would you suggest I prevent past you from noticing?” There was a slight challenge in his voice. 

Jack hated to say it but, “If you kill me as soon as you get there and I don't see you, I'll just assume the virus killed me.”

“Will you notice if the body is missing?”

“Probably, and I don't know what happened exactly, but his sister probably had a funeral.”

“We’ll have to find a way to make it seem like the 456 took his body.”

Jack nodded lightly. He knew that if he had thought there was even the slightest possibility Ianto was alive he would have spent his time looking for for Ianto, not saving humanity. This from the man who had sacrificed his own grandson to defeat the 456… No, he couldn't dwell on that. 

Jack was glad to be back in the TARDIS. Overtime the details had faded and he was newly impressed. It also had the comfort and familiarity of a home you return to after  
a long trip. Now that the Hub and his friends were gone, he didn't really have a home. Being here in the TARDIS, with the Doctor, it felt right. Only Rose was missing, he wouldn't have noticed that absence if Martha, or even Donna, had been there. The noise the TARDIS made as it dematerialised was comforting to Jack, as a song you hadn't heard in many years but had loved in childhood would be too many people. Jack felt shivers of excitement and hope running through his body. 

When the Doctor slipped on his gasmask and opened the doors to the TARDIS, all of Jack’s good feelings slipped out of him. They had got it wrong, they had got it all wrong. The Doctor took his gasmask back off again. As Jack watched, conflicted between disbelief and horrible confirmation that something like this would happen, Past Jack and Gwen left the room full of hundreds of anonymous bodies. Only Jack knew who one of those bodies belonged to. “No! No! No!” Jack rushed forward but the Doctor caught him before he could leave the TARDIS, both confining and comforting. 

“I'm so sorry, Jack, I'm so sorry.”

“No…”

Jack did calm down, but only because he knew he had no choice. The Doctor fiddled with various things on his control panel, Jack didn't find this action nearly as fascinating as he usually did. He caught a few words of what the Doctor was muttering, “...fixed point maybe…” “...bounced right off…” 

Finally the Doctor turned to face him. “I’m sorry, Jack. We just missed, I don’t know how. I thought… You know we can’t go back. We’d be crossing your timeline too many times. I’m sorry. I can’t change it. 

“Doctor, please. Please, Doctor”

The Doctor looked at Jack, broken because one more of the countless people he loved had died. It wouldn't matter to Jack in the in the long run if he saved Ianto, because someday Ianto would die again, and Jack would live, and be alone again. Jack probably would not even be around when that happened. Eventually Jack, or Ianto, would leave because Ianto would age and Jack wouldn't. He could relate to what Jack was experiencing, but he was a Time Lord, Jack was human. Maybe Ianto's death was a fixed point for a reason. All his instincts warned him against this but they also told him to help Jack, so… “Maybe we can still save him.” 

“How?” Jack said cautiously, but the Doctor ignored him and walked out of the TARDIS. Jack followed close behind.

“Doctor, what are you doing? We have to go back, Doctor, we have to try again. Please Doctor, Doctor!” The Doctor ignored Jack’s pestering, and looked around the room.

“What number is he?”

Jack paused. “14. But why-”  
The Doctor strode through the rows of bodies until he reached #14.

“Okay, help me get him.”

“I can manage alone.” 

Jack’s tone didn't leave room for discussion. Well, with the Doctor there was always room for discussion, but this was definitely not something worth discussing. Jack picked Ianto's body up tenderly and held him as carefully and compassionately as one might hold a sleeping child. 

“How are we going to save him?” Jack asked again as they reached the TARDIS. “Now that we have his body we can't go back to before he was dead, can we?” 

The Doctor ignored Jack’s question and focused on what was likely to be a difficult trip. After all he was trying to mess with something else that was a fixed point, but if he was right, this was meant to happen. If it was meant to happen there was nothing the Doctor could do to prevent it and everything would be better if he played along. If it wasn't the TARDIS wouldn't be able to land.

“Doctor, where are we going?”

“Satellite five.”

“Satellite five But… You can't, Doctor no!” He sounded alarmed, having released what the Doctor was planning.

“Just watch me.”

Jack didn't know what to do. Part of him wanted to scream and protest.His endless life was torture, but part of him wanted Ianto back at any price. He was so lonely. It wasn't like he could control the Doctor anyway, he had wanted plenty of reasonable things that he hadn't gotten, not being abandoned, for one. As the Doctor picked up Ianto, Jack stayed frozen. He didn't know what to do. 

Apparently it was meant to happen. When the Doctor opened the doors to the TARDIS, Jack couldn't help but watch in fascination. The TARDIS had materialised on Satellite Five, only minutes before Jack would be made immortal. the hall was empty except for Past Jack, who lay crumpled and dead, for the first time. The Doctor lay Ianto in the hallway, making sure his body was closer to the control room than Jack’s. Rose’s voice, amplified by the Time Vortex, resonated from the down the hallway.

“I looked into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looked into me.” 

Rose’s voice made Jack feel weird, he hadn't actually heard Rose with the vortex inside her the first time.

“You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence, and I divide them.”

This was almost scary, scary not a word that came to mind when Jack thought about Rose. 

“How can I let go of this? I bring life.”

Jack couldn't see the energy that swept down the hall, but the Doctor could. The energy reached Ianto before it could reached Jack. 

Ianto Jones breathed. 

The Doctor rushed out grabbed Ianto and had dematerialised the TARDIS before the energy reached Jack. So Jack never saw himself come back to life. That was okay. He remembered it all to well. Ianto coughed and sat up. 

“Ianto!”Jack ran over and kneeled next to him.

“Jack, where-”

“The TARDIS. Oh, Ianto, it's good to see you.”

“What happened, I-” 

“The Doctor saved you.”

“I assume it would be pointless to ask Doctor Who?”

“That's the one.”

“Did you ask him to?”

“Yes.”

“Then you saved me. From what I hear, the Doctor doesn't mess with time for just anyone.” 

“Ianto, I'm so sorry.”

“Why?”

“...You're like me now, and I know how awful that is.” Ianto didn't bother to ask for details about how that had happened. What was likely to be a long and complicated explanation could wait for later. 

“Do you promise not to leave?”

“Of course.”

“Then I don't mind.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I've just got to ask,” Jack said suddenly a little bit nervous “when you were dying, you said you loved me. Is that true?” 

“How could it not be? You accepted me and forgave me after everything that happened. You gave my life purpose again. You give me reasons to smile, and that's so rare and so wonderful.”

“It's not just something you say when you're dying?” 

“No.” They were silent for a moment and then Ianto spoke “ I have to ask, in the House Of The Dead, you said you loved me. Was that true?”

“You remember that?” 

“Yes. But it's a more like remembering a dream than real life.” Ianto said. “You didn't answer my question. Is it true?

“How could it not be?” Jack said echoing Ianto. “You had such a short human life and you chose to spend some of it with me. You really understood me and knew me but you didn't hate me. You forgave me for everything you saw me do, and everything you found out. You kept giving me reasons appreciate life that was so rare, and special, and wonderful.”

“It's not just something you say to the dying?”

“No.” Jack smiled slightly. 

“By the way Jack, there's nothing to forgive.” 

“I might say the same to you.”

“You might or you do?” Ianto teased. 

Jack’s reply was both teasing and serious. “I do.”

Jack leaned over to hug Ianto, ignoring the Doctor watching him. It wasn't so much that he didn't care that the Doctor was watching, as that for once the Doctor had slipped out of his consciousness.

The Doctor smiled as he watched Jack and Ianto talk, but his expression was a little bit sad, too. He was glad that Jack wasn't alone anymore, but he still was. The Doctor knew he would never have a permanent home, he would always travel, but traveling was so much easier when he had a companion. Maybe Jack and Ianto would want to travel with him. Before, Jack had had a team he needed to stay with, but as long as Ianto was here it didn't seem like that obligation existed anymore. Of course they would probably just want him to take them home. 

 

 

Ianto had wanted to change cloths and shower, wash the essence of death of him. Jack had taken a roundabout way to the TARDIS’s wardrobe in order to give Ianto a toure. He had been impressed, of course, but less austruck then many people would have been. He had read everything in the archives about The Doctor and his TARDIS, and listened to Jack’s own stories. In the TARDIS’s wardrobe they found a suit with a red shirt, Jack had to wonder how The TARDIS always had exactly what you needed. 

Jack had been happier than he could remember having been in an almost uncountable number of years showing Ianto around The TARDIS but after directing Ianto to a bathroom he had been left on his own. Being left on his own inevitably led to Jack finding his way back to the room he had used while traveling with The Doctor. The familiar surroundings still made him sad, but not as sad as he would have expected. Most of his thoughts and fantasies about The TARDIS had been about the past, now he was actually looking forward to the future. Without fully thinking out what he was doing Jack glanced around to make sure no one was looking before slipping the box of photos he had rescued from the Hud out of a secret pocket in his coat. Opening it he looked at several crisp photos laying on top of the worn ones. There were several photos of his whole team, a picture of Tosh, one of Tosh and Owen in one of the rare sweet moments they had gotten to share, and several more of Ianto. He picked the ones of Ianto out of the box. This box was for memories of lives and and people he had no choice but to bury. He slid the photos of Ianto into a different pocket. He wanted the memories but he didn't plan to hide them, these were the first memories he would never need to bury. 

Secure in his knowledge that the future would be happy Jack felt free to revisit the past memories he had stored in this room. He found the small cache of photos he had tucked into a secure nesh. He had put them there not so much to hide them as to keep them from getting lost when The TARDIS jerked around. He had photos of some of the most extraordinary tourist attractions in the universe, but the ones that were the most precious to him were the ones of himself, and The Doctor, and Rose laughing. They barely made him sad because almost as soon as he started to get sad he would remember Ianto and fell almost gidley happy.

But where was Ianto, surely he should be hear by naw, he was always on time. Jack started to feel nervous. What if Ianto didn't come back, what if he suddenly realized how much he hated Jack for letting him diy, or bringing him back in this horrible way, or what if had found out everything else Jack had done. Shorly that would be enough to make even Ianto hate him. What if he had gotten The Doctor to let him off without Jack noticing. Jack chided himself for being paranoid and tried to go back to the photos. Could it really even be possible that Ianto was back, had he envisioned it so many times and wanted it so badly that he had tricked himself into thinking it was reel. Their first attempt at bringing Ianto back hadn't worked, and Ianto being immortal to, that was definitely to good to be true. Suddenly he was trapped, paralyzed,stretched between chiding himself for thinking it was possible that Ianto was alive and on The TARDIS, and chiding himself for worrying that Ianto wouldn't be back any second. 

Ianto showered and dressed and, feeling considerably better and less contaminated, went to find Jack. He wasn't in the immediate vicinity and Ianto started to feel panicky, without the logical part of his brain's permission. What if Jack had released that forever was too long and gotten The Doctor to drop him off somewhere without him knowing, or what if this was just a trick like being brought back to life while he was in the house of the dead had been. Keeping a careful check on the feelings he knew to be irrational Ianto made his way back to the control room. He had been angry at The Doctor enough in the past, mostly concerning his treatment of Jack, but right now he felt mostly great full. He had no trouble greeting The Doctor civilly and inquiring about where Jack might be. He was ridiculously relieved to hear the casual reply that he had probably gone to his old room because he had a sonic blaster that he would probably want to collect.

The Doctor’s theory that Jack was in his old room proved to be correct, except Jack seemed to be looking at photographs. His face lit up when he saw Ianto, but Ianto's own fears were clearly echoed in the back of his eyes. Ianto stepped forward to hug Jack, needing a hug himself and seeing that Jack clearly needed one. 

“Don't go out of my sight again. Okay?” Jack murmured

“As long as you return the favor” 

It would have been impossible for them not to experience some uneasiness, Ianto thought, so it was better that it was out of the way now. He recalled someone telling him that whatever you learn first you tend to believe, no matter what evidence there is to the contrary. He and jack had both spent a lot of time getting themselves used to the fact that Ianto could age and die and Jack couldn't, they had both known that if Ianto didn’t die young from something Torchwood related one of them would have to make the decision to leave. That would never have to happen now. Together they turned to look at the photographs. 

The reminiscing only lasted for a few minutes, normally that would not have been the case but everything was different now. They were both eager to experience the future and felt that the past could wait for as long as necessary, after all they had forever. That might have had the opposite effect in meny circumstances but for them truly looking forward to the future was a rarity. They had plans to make and they wanted to make those plans.

“ The Doctor said you had a sonic device” 

“I’d forgotten about that, it must be here somewhere” Jack’s eyes lit up in a way that seemed slightly dangerous to Ianto. 

Jack opened four different secret compartments before finding the sonic blaster. One contained some kind of alien sweat that was still in its wrapper, but which Ianto would not have eaten under any circumstances. The second contained amo for Jack’s gun.


End file.
